144 DC COMICS
dealt with drug abuse, featuring Speedy, Green Arrow’s young sidekick, dealing with
a heroin addiction.
In the 1980s, DC began publishing infl uential work by British comics creators
who were writing comic books with a refi ned, literary approach. Among these
creators was Alan Moore, who revived sales on what was a relatively minor title, Saga
of the Swamp Th ing. Moore wrote the horror title in a way that would be palatable
to adult readers, particularly adults who were not lifelong readers of comic books.
DC, in response to Moore’s success, saw a developing market for gritty, sophisticated
adult comic books.
Following the popularity of Swamp Th ing, Moore planned on using characters
acquired by DC from Charlton Comics in 1984 for the miniseries Watchmen,
illustrated by Dave Gibbons, released in 1986. Unfortunately, Moore and Gibbons’s
proposed storyline would have either killed off or rendered useless all of the Charlton
characters Moore planned to use. As a compromise measure, Moore and Gibbons
crafted new characters that corresponded to the qualities of the original Charlton
characters. Collected as a graphic novel, Wa t c h m e n remains one of DC’s most popular
titles, and has been adapted into fi lm by director Zack Snyder.
Also in 1986, writer/artist Frank Miller, riding a wave of popularity for his work
on Marvel’s Daredevil, created a four-issue miniseries exploring Batman in his old
age, Batman: Th e Dark Knight Returns. Th is miniseries captured public attention
and was another major seller, both in its individual issues and as a collected paperback
sold through traditional bookstores. Th e Dark Knight Returns also touched off a wave
of interest in Batman culminating in the 1989 Batman fi lm, directed by Tim Burton.
Meanwhile, the success of the Batman fi lm also stimulated a revived interest in comics
as a form of American popular culture since Burton borrowed liberally from the Bat-
man mythos in a retro set design, 1940s-era characters like Vickie Vale and the Joker,
and an intensely surreal, manic world view that had been rarely seen since the incursion
of the lighter, Silver Age versions of comic heroes in the 1960s.
Th e year from 1985 to 1986 also featured a major event in continuity for DC
superheroes, Crisis on Infi nite Earths. Written by Marv Wolfman and illustrated
by George Pérez. Crisis on Infi nite Earths enabled DC to completely revamp its
aging, frequently cumbersome and contradictory continuity to allow for new read-
ers. Whether DC was successful in attracting new readers with this event is unclear,
but Crisis established a pattern for later DC events such as Infi nite Crisis and the
corporate crossover, Avengers/JLA.
In 1993, in an attempt to capitalize on the success of its adult-themed comic books,
DC created a new publishing imprint, Vertigo Comics. Titles that had been previously
published under the DC imprint, featuring adult themes such as Swamp Th ing and the
popular Sandman written by Neil Gaiman, were moved to the imprint. Many Vertigo
titles have become extremely popular in their collected paperback format, including
Sandman, John Constantine: Hellblazer (a spinoff from Swamp Th ing), and Preacher,
written by Garth Ennis and illustrated by Steve Dillon.
